nwasianweekly.com
April 19, 2008

Seattle is proposing a 20-cent “green fee” on all new plastic and paper shopping bags given out at local grocery, convenience and drug stores and a ban on all Styrofoam food containers.

Proposed ‘green fee’ gets mixed reaction in I.D.

By James Tabafunda
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

There may be an update to a familiar question asked by store cashiers. If Seattle city officials move forward on a current proposal, shoppers will be asked: “Paper or plastic — for 20 cents?”

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin are proposing a 20-cent “green fee” on all new plastic and paper shopping bags given out at local grocery, convenience and drug stores. Their plan announced on April 2 is aimed at reducing the use of these bags by 70 percent or more. It also calls for a ban on all Styrofoam food containers, one already in effect in more than 20 other U.S. cities.

The reactions by International District businesses to this proposal range from approval to serious concern.

Quan Li feels the proposed “green fee” is anything but a good one for his small, family-run Asian grocery store.

“That will probably ruin the business because a lot of customers won’t pay 20 cents for the plastic bags,” said Li, owner of the Dong Sing Market in the ID. “It will probably hurt the business.”

Li will collect the fee if the proposal is made a city ordinance, but he will also ask his customers’ opinions about it. He wants to know whether his customers agree or disagree with him.

He admitted one benefit of the proposed fee will be lower costs to his business that come with buying fewer plastic bags and re-using bags his customers bring to the store.

A few ID businesses have already stopped handing out plastic shopping bags.

One Vietnamese eatery — Tamarind Tree Restaurant — in the center of Little Saigon in the ID switched two years ago to paper food containers, which cost two to three times more than Styrofoam food containers.

“We need to find a way to save the environment, and it costs to save it. I think that people who don’t want to spend that (20-cent) cost, they can bring their reusable to-go container and come to the restaurant,” said Tam Nguyen, the restaurant’s owner.

“My restaurant is small, but a lot of the Vietnamese restaurants (here) look up to us, and I want to give them a good impression that we have to be responsible,” he added.

He looks forward to the possible new city ordinance. “We are in the position to educate people and to implement that, and I think people will appreciate it,” he said. Nguyen says he has already received favorable comments from his customers about his switch to paper.

Other restaurant owners are not so optimistic. Shaio-ling Wang, owner of China Harbor on Eastlake, said that the ban on Styrofoam containers would be extremely inconvenient, and a significant financial burden. She said she assumes most other restaurant owners feel the same, but the collective “voice of environmentalists is very strong in this country” and any protest from the food industry would be useless.

She also mentioned that with the recent downturn of the economy, more customers are asking to take their leftovers home. According to Wang, Styrofoam takeout boxes cost 15 cents for a pack of 100, while paper boxes cost 35 cents for a pack of 100. But “whatever the city decides, we have no choice,” she concluded.

Mike Huang, owner of Mike’s Noodle House on Maynard Avenue in the ID, concurs. He predicted that all Chinese restaurants in the area would be seriously affected, even to the point of closing. Most ethnic restaurants’ profit margins are extremely low, he said, and even lower lately because of the economy — according to Huang, the price of supplies and food have gone up 30 percent in the last three months. He said that the more environmentally friendly takeout containers cost twice as much as Styrofoam containers.

He said that he would welcome posters from the city educating his customers and encouraging them to bring in their own containers. He also welcomes any resources they can provide. For example, there is a “nicer kind of plastic” that he likes, but he isn’t sure it conforms to the city’s new standards. Because of his lack of English skills, he doesn’t know how to determine if a product is environmentally sound.

Both Huang and Wang heard about the ban indirectly — Huang read an article in the Seattle Chinese Post, and Wang was unaware of the ban until asked for comments by the Northwest Asian Weekly for this story. According to Jino Yoon of Unicorn Crepe, some restaurant owners were notified through a letter sent out by the City of Seattle earlier this month. However, many Asian business owners may have language difficulties or not pay heed to their mail.

If approved by the City Council later this year, the fee and ban will go into effect on Jan. 1.

The 20-cent fee per bag will be split two ways — 15 cents for the city, 5 cents for the retailer to cover administrative costs. Retailers grossing less than $1 million a year will be allowed to keep the entire fee.

SPU expects to collect about $10 million annually from the fee. About $8 million of the total collected will go toward waste prevention and recycling programs and environmental education programs. The remaining $2 million will be spent to promote the switch to reusable bags, including the distribution of free bags to low-income families and those on fixed incomes.

Though the proposal is new to Seattle, it is common elsewhere. The city said Ireland’s similar fee — 15 cents per plastic bag since March 2002 — has cut use by 90 percent from 325 to 23 bags per person per year.

And the price could be far worse — since 2003, penalties in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India, for using plastic bags are as high as 100,000 rupees (US$2,500) and a prison sentence of up to seven years.

Eleanor Lee and Assunta Ng contributed to this report.

James Tabafunda can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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